Multiple overlapping deprivation analysis in low and middle income countries

Despite progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), millions of women and children are still left behind, even within countries that have demonstrated overall improvement. More appropriate analyses are needed to identify these individuals, understand the causes of their poverty and deprivations, and inform how legislation, policies and programmes could best support their rights. Profiling the most deprived, especially those suffering from multiple deprivations, is important in order to locate them both geographically and socially.

Understanding how deprivations (in domains like health, education, water, sanitation, food, or financial resources) overlap is useful for establishing where multi-sectoral interventions are necessary, and where simply intervening in one single domain is likely to have limited sustainable effects. Working in partnership with the University of York, Bristol University, Maastricht University, the Moroccan Haut Commissariat au Plan, as well as other partners that choose to join the initiative, the IRC aims at developing and experimenting an alternative way to analyse overlapping deprivations in an attempt to highlight inequity within and across countries and better inform national policies. This research programme complements research efforts presented in IRC’s Report Card 10.